


Nevermore to Leave Here

by Acadjonne



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Childhood, Childhood Memories, Cloud is Sora's Cousin, Family, Family Feels, Feels, Gen, Growing Up, Minor Character Death, Roxas and Sora Are Twins (Kingdom Hearts), Ventus and Vanitas Are Twins, character death mention, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25815202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acadjonne/pseuds/Acadjonne
Summary: Cloud grows up in one half of a duplex on Nibelheim Crescent, with Ven, Van, Roxas, and Sora just on the other side of his bedroom wall.It's the happiest period of Cloud's life.
Relationships: Cloud/Leon (Kingdom Hearts)
Kudos: 32





	Nevermore to Leave Here

**Author's Note:**

> So I might be writing an actual Sora-centric fic (which is why I latched onto him and mention him so much here??) and part of my notes were backstory on Cloud being Sora's cousins and how they grew up together and what their family life was like? And I got an idea about Cloud and his little tiny half of a duplex in my head, to write for a future scene in that Sora-fic, except this happened. I wrote this all today, and now I'm done and I'm gonna send it out as-is.
> 
> Oops?

Cloud grows up in one half of a duplex on Nibelheim Crescent, with his mother taking care of him and aunt Shae and her boys just on the other side of his bedroom wall.

Claudia Strife and Shae Creed were twins, and had been close their entire lives. They’d shared a wedding dress, married six months apart, and been each other’s maid of honour. When Neil Strife passed away, leaving Claudia a widow, Shae helped her move into the left half of the duplex she shared with her own husband, and doted on Cloud endlessly, even despite being in the later stages of a difficult pregnancy with twins. When Ventus and Vanitas were born, Claudia returned the favour, taking the twins to her side of the duplex during the afternoon so Shae could nap and get housework done, and returning them in the evenings when Shae’s husband Alfor arrived home to his wife and sons.

It’s the beginning of the happiest period of Cloud’s life. 

He adores the twins, even if they don’t do much until they’re about six months old. He spends the first months of their lives watching them silently, and occasionally calling out one of their names to alert his mother or Auntie Shae when they need something. Once Ventus and Vanitas learn to sit up on their own, Cloud takes it as an invitation that playtime has begun. He spends countless hours on Auntie Shae’s living room floor, rolling toy cars to Van and helping Ven put shaped blocks into the matching openings.

Vanitas takes his first steps at exactly nine months old, trailing shakily after Cloud who’d been called by his mother for a snack. Ventus takes another three weeks, but he  _ runs _ straight to Cloud, leaving Van behind. Cloud slows his pace for them, letting them walk by his sides as he holds one of their hands in each of his own, until they drag him along behind him to go play outside behind the duplex.

Ventus’ first word is “mama” and Vanitas’ is “Ven,” but they’re both quick learners at speaking when Cloud’s spurring them on. He’d never been a loud child himself, but it felt like the easiest thing in the world to ask one of them to repeat small words, numbers and names and titles that Cloud knows by heart at age five. At first, they call him “Ka,” then “Cowed,” unable to force their little tongues around the letter L, and Cloud almost gets more used to hearing it than his proper name.

Ven and Van are little more than a year old, and Cloud a few days away from six, when Shae tells Claudia that she’s expecting again. She and Alfor are over the moon, especially when they learn it’s another set of twins, another pair of little boys. The pregnancy is long, and unlike with Ven and Van, who were born three weeks early, Shae makes it to term this time.

Roxas and Sora Creed come into the world on March 28, just past noontime, into a family reeling with bereavement. Alfor’s excitement had gotten the better of him, or maybe he’d been hiding stress from his wife, because he suffers a heart attack just as he brings her to the hospital in mid-stage labour. Uncle Alfor was young, and healthy, and the doctors don’t understand why it happened, or how it took him so quickly. In one moment, he was holding his wife’s hand as she was settled into a delivery room, and the next he was unresponsive and still against the cold tiles of the floor.

Auntie Shae is sad for a long time after that. Claudia takes over care of Sora and Roxas as much as she can, and Cloud naturally takes to looking out for Ven and Van to help where he can. Auntie Shae does her best, feeding and changing and holding her new little ones, but the look in her eyes is one Cloud is scared of. He doesn’t like it, how it seems to make her look at the wall like something’s there, how she hold Sora without even looking at him, how she cries the first time Roxas ever smiles.

Claudia tears down the wall separating their kitchens, and Auntie Shae starts to look like herself again.

* * *

With Ventus and Vanitas, Cloud had never had a favourite. Some days, he felt like he couldn’t tell them apart unless he looked at them long enough, unless he watched for their eyes, although his mother and Auntie Shae never had any problems with it. With Sora and Roxas, however, Cloud has a clear bias from the start.

Ventus and Vanitas are both blond, as is Roxas, and while Van’s eyes are a pale brown, Rox and Ven have dark blue eyes. Sora’s eyes are bluer, somehow, shining like the afternoon sky, and his brown hair sets him apart from all three of his brothers quite easily. From the beginning, Cloud had been curious; Ventus and Vanitas and Roxas were all pictures of Auntie Shae, blond with bright, shining eyes, while Sora took his appearance mostly from Uncle Alfor. 

The real sealing of the deal is when, at eleven days old, Sora first discovers his own hands, and promptly shoves them into Cloud’s chin. He peers up at Cloud as he does it, almost like he knows just who Cloud is, before closing his eyes and falling asleep. Two months later, when Cloud tries to brush some hair from Sora’s face, he takes one of Cloud’s fingers in hand and proceeds to drool all over it. If Cloud had liked him before, he was absolutely  _ attached _ , then.

Even despite his favour for Sora, Cloud tries to divide his attention equally among all four babies. Uncle Alfor had put up a swingset with two kid swings and two baby swings just after Cloud turned six, and Cloud spends as much time as he can pushing Ven and Van on those swings outside while their brothers sleep. They dig up dirt in the backyard, tear the leaves from Claudia and Shae’s flowers in the front gardens, and draw in bright chalk along the front stone pavers on the Strife side of the yard. When Roxas and Sora are awake and aware, Cloud pushes buttons on their singing baby toys and helping to lay them onto the foam play mats in Auntie Shae’s living room.

Sora and Roxas both start walking at nine months, just like Ven and Van did, but Cloud is a sucker who will carry Sora on his hip any time Sora makes those grabby hands at him. Roxas seems indifferent about the whole thing, as does Vanitas, although Ventus will ask Cloud for piggyback rides when the younger twins aren’t playing with them.

In the summer sunshine, leading into the cool fall breeze, Cloud holds onto his little family with both hands, enjoying every smile and laugh.

* * *

Cloud had been unsure about kindergarten when he’d first started, afraid to leave Ven and Van or to get home to find Sora and Roxas had come early, but by the end of the year, he’d grown comfortable with the half-days and the alphabet and the new kids in his class.

First grade, in comparison, makes Cloud miss being little like his cousins. He stays at school all day now, only going home at two on the busses with the bigger kids, and the first three days, he falls asleep on the ride home and nearly misses his stop. All the kids in his first grade class seem to know each other, but none know Cloud, even the ones he was in kindergarten with the year before. It’s lonely, and Cloud doesn’t have many words to spend when he’s in his classes all day. He saves them all for the boys.

Sora and Roxas are always napping when Cloud gets home, and most days, Ven and Van are too. Cloud takes up the habit of going to Auntie Shae’s off the bus, because his mom can see him from the big kitchen now that the wall’s gone, and he can go straight upstairs to Auntie Shae’s room to watch the babies sleep.

He did the same with Ven and Van, when they were brand new, watching as they breathed with their bellies and didn’t move otherwise, except for how sometimes they’d reach out to one another in their sleep. Mostly, he keeps his eyes on Sora now, because Sora always has so much energy when he’s awake, always laughing and smiling and reaching up for Cloud or his brothers to pick him up, and when he sleeps it’s like he’s become a doll. In the darkened room, Cloud can just barely make out his breathing, the only part of Sora that ever moves when he’s asleep. He’d stand there all day, if he could, just watching.

One thing Cloud does enjoy about first grade is that the art teacher helps them all make pretty cards for their families for Christmas. Most of the other kids make them to their mommies and daddies, and one little girl makes it to her grammy and grampy, but Cloud’s is for Ventus and Vanitas and Sora and Roxas. It has a picture of Santa Claus on it, which Cloud colours in with bright red and blue, and even goes so far as to give Santa blond hair. On the inside of the card, he draws a heart, the doesn’t ask for help when he writes, “ _ to ven and van and roxas and sora, love cloud. _ ” Auntie Shae puts it up on the big fridge, just at the perfect height for the boys to see it but not take it off.

He goes through another three months of school, broken up by Roxas and Sora’s first birthday, where he gets covered in frosting by all four of his cousins, and then gets an extra two days out of school on a weekend in April. It’s on this weekend that Roxas first tries to say Cloud’s name, only managing the “ow” sound, and Sora has taken to pointing and calling him “bo!”

Cloud goes back to school the next Tuesday, already counting down the days until summer vacation begins.

* * *

Vanitas seems to dislike school with a burning passion from the moment he starts kindergarten, but Ventus couldn’t be happier to be there. He somehow makes friends with a girl in second grade named Aqua, and a boy in Cloud’s class named Terra. They play together during the morning recess most days, always inviting Vanitas to play with them, but he tends to stay by Cloud’s side instead. Sora and Roxas still nap most days when Cloud gets home from school, but they’ve grown used to the routine and wake not long after his arrival.

By the time Sora and Roxas get to kindergarten, Vanitas has decided he’s indifferent about going to school every day, no longer fighting to stay home, but not worried when his teacher lets him put his books away early either. Ventus is still just as happy to play with Aqua and Terra during recess, and Sora and Roxas seem to have made friends both in their kindergarten class and in the grades above them. It is with pride in his eyes that Sora introduces first grader Riku and kindergartener Kairi to his sixth grader cousin Cloud, who offers to play pirates with them at recess that morning.

The end of Cloud’s sixth grade school year is punctuated with a crying Sora, begging him to stay in elementary school with himself and his brothers. Cloud explains to him that they’re still going to see each other, Cloud will just be across the street, and he’ll try to come visit them during his lunch time, when they’re all on recess. It calms Sora down for the time, but causes another round of tears when Cloud finds out on the first day of seventh grade that he’s not allowed to cross the street to the elementary school.

Cloud gets four detentions in two weeks before his mom and Auntie Shae tell him very sternly to stop. Even Sora’s puppy dog eyes and Ven’s pleading doesn’t help.

* * *

If anyone asks, Cloud will tell them that the last real day of his childhood was Roxas and Sora’s eleventh birthday.

Mom and Aunt Shae both work every night for two weeks straight before the day of, and for another ten days after. Cloud babysits his younger cousins, for a given value of “babysitting” which basically equates to making sure they all do their homework, eat at least one serving of dinner each, and then watching TV with them until nine, when all four get ready for bed.

The day of the actual birthday thankfully lands on a Saturday. Mom and Aunt Shae are both home all day and all night, Riku and Kairi and Roxas’ friend Hayner all come over and spend the night, and even grandpa Yen Sid stops by. Aerith and Tifa have given Cloud birthday cards for both of the younger twins, and Ven and Van’s friends seem to have done the same. Just like when he was a baby, Sora ends up covering himself and Cloud in an alarming amount of frosting, and he eats four pieces of cake by himself.

The best part of the evening is probably when Sora opens his gifts from Riku and Kairi, finding a crown necklace and a star-shaped keychain waiting for him. Roxas also gets a keychain from Kairi, but he doesn’t seem to find it as exciting as the munny he accumulates in his birthday cards. Between the two of them, the twins end up with a pretty good haul.

The next ten days pass as normal, with the five boys going to school, coming home as their mothers leave for work, and Cloud watching the younger four through the evening into the night. On the eleventh day, Mom and Aunt Shae managed to get time off again, this time opting to spend the day and part of the evening out on the beach a town over and then getting takeout to bring home to feed their small army of sons.

Police knock on Aunt Shae’s door just after nine, followed almost immediately by a knock on Mom’s door. Ventus jumps, already wound tight when his mother and aunt were late coming home and Cloud couldn’t get ahold of either of them. Cloud answers Aunt Shae’s door, explaining to the officer before him who he is and what the living situation entails.

Claudia Strife and Shae Creed suffered a car accident on the way back into town. Aunt Shae died instantly, and Mom is in the hospital. No one is sure if she’ll wake up.

All five boys are herded to Yen Sid’s by ten thirty, bags in tow and crossing Radiant Garden in two cop cars. Ventus, Vanitas, and Sora ride in one car, and Cloud and Roxas in the second.

None of them know it at the time, but it’s the last night all five of them will be together for a long time.

* * *

Aside from her twin sister, Claudia Strife also had two brothers, Eraqus and Xemnas Masters. Cloud had briefly met Uncle Eraqus once, when he turned ten, but he lives three hours away in a bigger city. Neither Cloud nor either set of twins had met Uncle Xemnas in their life.

The day after Aunt Shae’s death, he swoops into Yen Sid’s house with a lawyer and takes Roxas with him. Uncle Eraqus arrives an hour after they leave, and after spending some time speaking quietly with grandpa Yen Sid, takes Ven and Van with him. They’re reluctant to leave Sora and Cloud, but uncle Eraqus kindly reassures them.

“It’s only temporary,” he promises, “until Claudia is better and she can take of all of you. You’ll only be a phone call away until then.”

Cloud goes back home to Nibelheim Crescent and begins packing up Aunt Shae’s side of the duplex. Grandpa Yen Sid told Cloud and Sora that he’d take care of the ownership, that he’d give Shae’s half to Claudia when she was better, but Cloud finds a realtor on the lawn hammering in a for sale sign when he arrives. He inform the realtor about the kitchen situation, who promises to make arrangements with the potential future owners. With nothing better to do once two weeks have passed and Cloud has taken all that he can from Aunt Shae’s, he buys some lumber and a book on renovations and starts putting the wall back up himself.

Cloud visits Mom in the hospital every night, sometimes with Sora and sometimes alone. Riku and Kairi stop in once, as do Aqua and Terra, but Cloud finds himself alone most days. He’s refused to let any of his friends come, despite Aerith’s offer of flowers and Tifa’s insistence that Cloud let her be his shoulder to cry on. They’re welcome at the duplex when he’s home, Cloud informs them, but he’s not ready for them to come visit his mother quite yet.

Mom never wakes up after the accident. Her body recovers as much as it can, in the six weeks that follow, but her brain doesn’t seem to be doing much at all. Grandpa Yen Sid and Uncle Eraqus spend many evenings on the phone, and Uncle Eraqus makes the trip down when they finally reach a decision. Cloud is forced to stay home with Ven and Van and Sora as his mother’s plug is pulled, although he does get to see her once, peaceful and pale, before the funeral viewings begin two days later. His cousins can’t bare to see her, but Cloud doesn’t blame them.

After Claudia Strife is buried, grandpa Yen Sid and Uncle Eraqus make arrangements. At seventeen, they decide Cloud is ready to stay on his own, and uncle Eraqus helps him get his mom’s half of the duplex listed under his ownership. Sora is to stay with grandpa Yen Sid, who begins the process of formal adoption, and Uncle Eraqus is to keep the older twins. Tentatively, Shae’s savings are put into four accounts, one for each of her sons, and the money from selling her half of the duplex is also divided up. Once each boy turns eighteen, they will have access to ten percent of the funds in their own account, per year, until the accounts are drained. Cloud’s inheritance from his mother ends up being his half of the duplex and everything inside, plus a few thousand munny to settle himself for the time being.

The house is quiet, with everyone else gone. Cloud doesn’t sleep through the night for weeks.

* * *

The duplex never felt small when everyone was still together. Auntie Shae’s half was the same size as Mom’s, but she’d divided up part of her own room, as well as Ven and Van’s, to make Sora and Roxas a room. It had been cramped, but they’d been used to it, and hardly noticed the difference. 

Mom’s side only has the two bedrooms upstairs, and then the kitchen, living room, and bathroom on the main floor. There’s technically a basement, and there’s even a door connecting it to Shae’s half of the house, but it’s mostly full of old family mementos and pieces of Cloud’s childhood toys and baby furniture. He leaves the basement as it is, unable to bear looking through boxes of photo albums and sets of old quilts, but he does finally put up proper drywall in the kitchen, and repaints it to a pale cream colour.

Tifa and Aerith take up Cloud’s offer to come see him, but when they’re around, he realizes how little space there really is inside the duplex. They never complain. Neither does Sora, on the occasions Yen Sid allows him to visit Cloud, but then Sora clings like a leach and refuses to let go until he needs to leave. Even then, some nights he doesn’t want to go at all.

Cloud stays in his own room, even though Mom’s is bigger. After six months, he shuffles things around a bit in her room. He pushes the dresser out of it’s spot next to the door and puts it under the bedroom window, and switches his own double bed with Mom’s queen. The double bed ends up directly across from the closet door, where Cloud can sit on it as he packs boxes full of his mother’s clothes. Even after the closet and dresser are empty, and Cloud’s donated or sold most of his mother’s things, something still doesn’t feel quite right.

He ends up painting the walls of the room blue, and, determined, paints his own bedroom walls sea green. He gets a stencil and sprays his name onto his bedroom door.

He thinks about putting Sora’s name on Mom’s bedroom door, but something like guilt eats away at him, and then he doesn’t. It never leaves his mind, no matter how he tries to forget it.

* * *

Cloud asks Yen Sid if he can take on custody of Sora at eighteen, and Yen Sid tells him to make something of himself first. Unable to afford school and with no real career ambitions, Cloud enlists himself as a soldier. He makes it through eighteen weeks of BMQ, and promptly gets send to Fort Condor for a year. Once his year is up, he comes him, with fellow soldier Zack Fair following on his heels.

Back home, Cloud starts apprenticing for a carpenter, and before long, he’s going to school for it. Zack spends three months in what Cloud refused to admit he thinks of as Sora’s room, and then finds his own apartment. He and Aerith seemed to have hit it off, and Cloud is happy for them. They make each other happy.

At nineteen, Cloud has a carpentry certification, a job working for a reno company, and he’s mostly managed to figure out how adult finances work. He asks Yen Sid again to take Sora, and Yen Sid refuses.

“As far as the law is concerned, Sora is under my care. Best to avoid the unnecessary headache of changing that now.” Yen Sid says. Cloud knows he means well, but it frustrates him. At least Sora’s allowed to spend the night at the duplex from time to time, and Cloud even offers to let him make the bedroom his own, but Sora always refuses.

He still turns to Cloud when he needs help though, and Cloud still has all the letters Sora mailed him while he was gone. He ruffles his little cousin’s hair and tells him to wash up for dinner. Maybe he’s not staying, but Cloud’s gonna take care of him while he’s here.

* * *

Cloud is twenty three and measuring Tifa’s bar counter when Squall Leonhart walks in for a drink.

Nineteen years old with chin length brown hair and blue eyes nearly as dark as Ven’s, Leon is a kindred spirit to Cloud. Neither of them have much in the way of words, but their silences are comfortable, always. They fit together like puzzle pieces, and it’s easy for Cloud to let him in. He finds himself glad he took the queen bed from Mom’s room once Leon moves in with him.

It’s so easy, with Leon. He doesn’t have to explain about Sora’s room, because Leon just somehow gets it, and quickly starts to encourage Sora to stay over whenever he likes. They work around each other in the kitchen, Leon making coffee for them both in the mornings and Cloud digging out Mom’s or Aunt Shae’s old cookbooks to feed themselves and their friends. 

They’re both carpenters, although they work at different places. Leon’s father owns a furniture place, where Leon makes frames for couches and chairs and tables, and Cloud’s still secure and content at the reno place. They work together on Seventh Heaven for Tifa, whenever she feels she has the munny to pay them, although they both sometimes do little things for the bar anyway, free of charge.

Cloud had never given much thought to relationships before, aside from a few passing flights of fancy which he’d kept to himself. He’s happy with Leon, though, content and comfortable in how they fit together. They’re honest with each other, they talk things out, and they’re nearly always on the same page. It’s a level of satisfaction with his life that Cloud hasn’t felt in nearly half a decade.

He holds on tight and vows the never let go.

* * *

“Do you ever think about how I’m the baby out of everyone we know?” Sora asks one night, apropos of nothing at all.

Tactile as ever, his shoulder’s pressed along Cloud’s side, his arm thrown over Sora’s shoulder in an easy and relaxed comfort. Cloud shrugs gently, not enough to jostle either of them, and looks down at his cousin.

“Tifa been teasing you about the babyface again, shortstack?”

Sora shakes his head. “I just feel like everyone I know is so, adult-y, and I’m still just a kid. It’s weird.” He pulls his knees up, although he doesn’t curl into himself. Cloud gives him a once over, but he seems genuine, not like he’s trying to hide something.

Cloud tells him, “You should feel lucky you’re the youngest. You get to watch us all make mistakes for you, so you don’t have to.” Sora shrugs, but he doesn’t say anything else.

Cloud gives him a quick squeeze before ruffling his hair and letting the subject drop. The sun’s dipping in the sky, and Leon should be home any minute. They might as well set the table.

**Author's Note:**

> You can blame Rick and Willamine for this. Rick suggested me Kingdom Hearts when I got a PS2, and Willamine talked me into getting the ff7 remake now I've got a PS4. (jk Rick doesn't know I wrote this and Wil only knows I needed help for parent names).
> 
> If you're wondering why Ven, Van, Roxas and Sora have the last name Creed, it's ostensibly because Willamine suggested I use Crithe or Creathe, which she got from the old Irish cride, meaning "heart." Mostly it's because I'm also a King fan and finished Pet Sematary a month ago. Let me live, the children needed a family name. We're big on family in this house, I have an army of cousins.


End file.
